Archaeological Survey: Grimsby

Wessex Archaeology for Murphy

55 miles off the coast of Grimsby, Hornsea Project Two is creating the world’s largest offshore wind-farm. The multibillion-pound scheme will see the installation of 300 turbines over an area five times the size of the city of Hull. Funded by a Danish energy company, the site will eventually deliver clean, sustainable power to around 1.8 million British homes.

Bringing that power ashore, of course, requires a very substantial cable and the route that its 1.5m trench will take across the landscape passes through a number of areas of archaeological interest. Surveying those sites is where SUAVE comes in.

The cable itself will be laid by infrastructure specialist J. Murphy & Sons and as part of the contract, it is working with Wessex Archaeology to identify and evaluate any historically important sites and features. The work so far has required the creation of several very large trenches – some measuring more than 300m by 40m – and Wessex Archaeology asked SUAVE to help produce a detailed photographic record.

We have made two day-long visits to survey the trenches at the point of their completion. The most recent of these was in February 2017. Their aim is to produce detailed survey data before the construction work continues and the archaeology is hidden once again.